


Three Turns and a Reality Away

by Cullhach



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Galaxy Garrison, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mentioned Keith's Father (Voltron), Mentioned Lance (Voltron)'s Family, Mentioned Shiro (Voltron), Platonic Soulmates, Prompt: Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-07-20 02:47:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19984801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cullhach/pseuds/Cullhach
Summary: Keith and Lance are ‘soulmates’ (bet you never saw that tag before) who can bend reality to trade places within their respective universes.





	Three Turns and a Reality Away

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on the vague concept that, because Keith and Lance can both pilot Red, there must be some part of their quintessence that overlaps, or is "the same." At least that’s how it worked in my head. Totally could have been Lance and Allura, or Keith and Shiro, but these are the two that felt easiest for me to write, so here we are.

Lance had only been a day old the first time they switched. That’s what his mama told him when he was little. A day old, wrinkled and bald as a tiny old man, as babies often are. One moment she was holding him, and the next her arms were full of a very different baby boy. 

“How was the baby different?” Lance asked. 

“The baby had hair,” she teased, and Lance giggled when she poked his tummy.

“But I have hair now, mama! See?” He squirmed off her lap, ducking his head down so she could see it better. She just laughed and ruffled his hair. She was so silly sometimes!

They’d only switched for a few hours before reversing, and she’d gotten her little Lance back, slightly less wrinkly but just as bald as before. 

It was a phenomena that no one could really explain, this switching, but it happened to approximately one percent of the population. There were many words for it, too. The technical term was soul resonance, based on the widely accepted idea that there was some quintessential part of a person's soul that matched so closely with that of someone else’s that they could phase between whatever it was that separated realities, as the single point of contact where two worlds touched. Two halves of a whole, some people said.

Soulmates.

It was hard to control at first. He could sometimes feel what the other boy was feeling, and this was usually the trigger for a switch. One of them would get upset, and then poof! They’d switch places. 

The other boy’s papa was nice. They lived somewhere that was really hot, but the man gave Lance popsicles sometimes, so he didn’t mind all that much. Lance’s mama said that the other boy was named Keith, and Keith’s papa laughed when Lance asked him how come Keith wasn’t bald when he was a baby (it wasn’t fair that Lance was bald and Keith wasn’t!)

It wasn’t until he got a little older that Lance realized how different their worlds were. It was little things at first. Keith’s clock could talk to him. The television projected onto the air instead of a wall or a screen. Keith’s dad even had a bike that floated! It was like they were from the future! (boy was he jealous). Lance wished that bikes could fly where he lived. Maybe he could be the one to make them fly if he paid enough attention! Keith’s dad liked to work on the bike, and showed him how to do little things sometimes.

But then, one day, Keith’s papa was gone.

At first Lance just thought he was going to be sick because his stomach felt funny and his throat got tight. He got up from the couch where they were watching tv and ran to the bathroom, bare feet slapping against the linoleum, but he didn’t throw up like he thought he would. 

Instead, he started to see the things that Keith could see. There were people in his house, and they were trying to talk to Keith, but Keith didn’t want to talk to them. He wanted them to go away, and he wanted his papa back, because he didn’t want to be alone alone alone, and then Keith was crying, and Lance was crying, and he wasn’t sure who started first, but it didn’t really matter because when Keith was upset, so was Lance.

Lance ran back to the family room, to his mama and papa, and threw himself between them, sobbing into the back cushion of the couch.

“Lance! What’s wrong?” They exclaimed.

“Keith’s papa isn’t ever coming back and now he is alone!” Lance wailed, “and the people are going to take him away from his house and, and--!” Lance hiccuped, an idea popping into his head, “--you need to hug him!”

And just like that, they switched. Lance was standing in a familiar old house that wasn’t exactly his, and all the people around him stopped to stare.

He folded his arms, tears still trailing down his face, and held up a defiant, if wobbly, chin. 

“Keith doesn’t want to talk to you anymore.”

The people tried to convince him to switch back, but Lance wasn’t stupid. He hated it when adults acted like he couldn’t understand things (and yes, while he may not always understand what they were saying _exactly_ , he could still tell when they were up to something). Keith didn’t want to come back, and so Lance folded his arms and shook his head when they tried to convince him otherwise.

They could wait.

He went to Keith’s room and shut the door after they finally gave up. Most of the adults had left, but one lady was sitting downstairs, waiting. 

The bed was messy, recently used, but all of Keith’s toys were set where they were supposed to be. Lance walked over to the desk in the corner and pulled out some crayons and paper. He decided he would draw Keith a picture for when he came back. Keith liked to draw, enough that there was a binder at Lance’s house where they kept his pictures for him. A picture was the perfect idea, Lance thought.

When he finished, he stuffed it under Keith’s pillow for him to find later.

Then he would remember that he wasn’t alone.

-o-o-o-o-o-

As he got older, Keith began to realize that there was a lot of controversy regarding soulmates. Most people with a soulmate were just regular people, going about their daily lives like everyone else, but there were some who used it for bad things. People could have their soulmate commit crimes that could never be traced back to them. Sometimes people were linked with bad soulmates who would force a switch and then do terrible things. 

How was the government supposed to handle people like that? Was it fair to lock up an innocent person because their soulmate could pop in and do bad things at any moment, had done so before? How could you prove that someone was entirely uninvolved with their soulmates actions?

You couldn’t, and so they stopped switching for the most part. It was easier to stay under the radar for this sort of thing when it came down to it. If he never switched, then it wouldn’t be a problem.

There were exceptions to this, of course.

Keith was stuck in an after school program he’d been roped into. It was supposed to help keep high risk kids and teens off the streets between school and going home for the night, and while he was a little peeved by the whole deal, some of the activities were interesting, at least. Today there was an old guy talking about space. Keith was sitting away from the group, pretending to do an assignment while he secretly listened.

He was busy doodling fighter class ships in the margins of his homework when his field of view became obscured by what he had started calling “Lance Vision.” This shared sight phenomena was only supposed to happen when ones soulmate was experiencing emotional extremes. Keith rolled his eyes. Either their resonance was broken or Lance felt _everything_ in extremes, because it happened with a relatively high frequency, sometimes multiple times a day. 

Keith would have brushed it off, but he paused. Lance put off a lot of vibes. He radiated enthusiasm at most times of the day, interspersed with bouts of affection and frustration when he was around his family and friends. He got nervous sometimes at school, and upset when he couldn’t get something just right, but right now he was— afraid? 

Keith scrunched his eyebrows, focusing. Lance was genuinely dreading something, not just nervous.

Keith frowned and stood, turning to head for the door. Everyone was inside today, hiding from the afternoon heat, so his best shot at privacy was to go outside to the ball courts. Once he was tucked away in a shaded corner, he focused again. 

Lance was hiding in a janitorial closet. He’d stayed late at school for some help on an assignment, and he’d happened to get out at the same time as some classmates he’d offended the week before when he told them to leave another student alone. They had a reputation for harassing people, and Lance was their new favorite. His mom was waiting outside in the parking lot, but he had to actually make it outside before he was home free. 

_Help_? Lance thought at him.

Keith grinned. Situations like this were his specialty. After a quick glance around, he switched.

It was darker in the closet than he thought it would be, but the tiny strip of light under the door was enough. Keith reached out, grabbing a roll of paper towels before pushing the door open. He walked purposefully down the hallway, and the other students barely gave him a passing glance as they continued their search for Lance. He set the roll on a table near the door, and walked right out the front entrance.

He scanned the parking lot, and a few seconds later he was opening the door to the family minivan and a surprised mama McClain.

“Keith!” She leaned over and gave him a hug, and he smiled shyly into her curly hair as he returned it. “It’s been so long! What’s the occasion?”

“Lance didn’t want to walk all the way out here, so I did it for him.”

She laughed at the excuse, pulling away to start the car. They both knew she’d get the real story from Lance later, but for now, it was enough. 

-o-o-o-o-o-

Keith found a mentor and a friend in a man named Shiro, and was eventually recruited into a fancy space school where he got to learn cool space pilot stuff. 

Lance continued going to regular boring not-from-a-cool-futuristic-reality school and had regular part time job at a chicken restaurant. He had non-astronaut, but-still-cool friends, and was saving up to buy his first car, wheels and all. That was reality, and as boring as regular cars were, Lance was content.

And, just when Lance had begun to feel as though the future was something attainable and real, Keith’s world tipped upside down.

Lance was at work, in the middle of cooking up a basket of chicken when the fryer in front of him was replaced with fire and flashing lights and sirens and _panic_. He dropped the basket he had been holding back into the oil, barely noticing as scalding droplets splashed across his hand. He blinked twice, mouth dropping open in surprise, and tuned back in.

Keith was running down the hallway of his space school. Lance flinched back as something whizzed past Keith’s face, much too close for comfort, scorching the wall in front of him as he flew around a corner. 

Chaos. Half of the building had collapsed in on itself, limiting movement. A hand reached out, snagging Keith’s arm and swinging him into an alcove. 

It was Keith’s short friend; Lance couldn’t remember their name. Metallic footsteps echoed loudly through the destroyed hallway, and the two pressed closer into the dark corner of a collapsed pillar as the noise faded into the distance.

“Pidge!” Keith whispered harshly once the footsteps had receded, “How did you make it out of the dorms?!”

Pidge frowned and shook her head. “Not important right now. They’re targeting military personnel,” she grit out through her teeth, typing rapidly on a data pad. “Including students. Anyone on record for any military training training at all. They hacked into our system and downloaded everyone’s identity into their androids.”

“What can we do?” Keith brushed his hair away from his face, glancing back toward the hallway.

“I’m trying to corrupt the data so that they won’t know who to target, but they’re jamming all of the frequencies I can use.” Pidge continued to type even as she spoke. “I need to get this outside of the perimeter for the upload to go through.”

“So what, we make a run for it?” Keith grimaced.

Pidge didn’t answer right away, but she stopped typing to stare grimly at the screen. “You don’t have to come. We’ll probably get shot down well before we get there.”

It was then that Lance had an idea.

_No one needs to get shot_ , he thought at Keith, startling the latter.

“I might have an idea,” Keith relayed hesitantly, turning to Pidge. “I, uh, never registered my soulmate—”

“You have a _soulmate?!”_ Pidge interrupted,

“—yeah, but the government doesn't have any records of him in the system.”

Pidge perked up at that, a gleam in her eye. “And therefore the androids _shouldn’t_ target him— That’s super illegal, you know?” She added.

“LANCE.”

Lance jerked out of it, coughing as he inhaled smoke from his burning chicken. He lifted the basket out of the oil, hooking it to the fryer and fanning wildly as he stepped back. 

“Dude, that chicken is really, _really_ burned. Like, the carbon remains of what used to be chicken. I’m kind of impressed.” Hunk, Lance’s friend and coworker, tutted from the grill next to the fryers.

Lance darted toward Hunk, grabbing him by the shoulder.

“Hunk, my buddy my friend, remember how I mentioned that I have a soulmate?”

“Uuum, what?”

“Well we might have to switch here pretty quick and I need you to cover for me, ok? His name is Keith and HOLY—”

They switched.

Pidge was shoving a tablet into his hands, face grim in the half light of the destroyed hallway. 

“Don’t die,” she said, then offered a small grin. “You smell like chicken.”

Lance saluted her, tucking the tablet inside of his apron and hugging it to his chest in an attempt to stop his hands from shaking. He stood and took a step forward, before pausing. 

“Uh, which way is the perimeter?”

“Over that pile of rubble, then take a left, go all the way to the end of the hallway, and there should be a door on the right that goes outside. Follow the exit signs. Just get as far away from the building as you can.” Pidge adjusted her glasses. “You’ll know when you go far enough; I threw in a little something extra with that program.”

Lance nodded, swallowing as he turned back to the hallway. Everything felt much more real now that he was in the middle of it. He took a tentative step forward, then another, and another. He hoisted himself over the rubble pile with the help of a busted pipe. 

He poked his head around the corner. Dust drifted down through the air, catching in the green glow of the exit sign. Water was soaking through a hole in the toe of his shoe, so he ignored the smell and prayed that it was water from a potable source. This was fine. Everything was great. Even if he ran into whatever the enemy was, they wouldn’t target him. That’s what Pidge said. Pidge was super smart or something. It was fine.

It seemed clear, so he stepped around the corner, heart racing. The hallway stretched into infinity in that moment, a labor worthy of Heracles, but he was just Lance, and Lance would have to do.

Step. Squelch. Step. Squelch.

He was going to buy new work shoes the second he got home.

Step. Squelch. Step. Squelch.

He was pretty sure that everything within a square kilometer could hear him coming.

Step. Squelch. Step. Squelch.

“ _Hey_!” Someone whispered harshly, and he barely suppressed a yelp, arms crossed in a death grip over the tablet. 

“ _What do you think you’re_ doing _?!”_

Lance picked his wits back up off of the floor and kept walking. “I’m breaking the droids. Um, you’ll know when they're down.”

“— _Is he wearing an apron_ ? _Hey!”_

Lance was nearly to the door when metallic footsteps approached from the very opening he had been aiming for. Of course this would be the single stretch of hallway with no rubble to hide behind. Of course the droids would show up now. 

He pressed himself against the wall, trying to make himself smaller, just as they came around the corner. He flinched violently as one of them stopped and turned towards him, but after a moment it continued walking down the hallway. He nearly sat down right there in relief, but he had a job to do..

Lance ran once he was outside. A drone flew over to hover somewhere above his head, but once again, no shots were fired. 

A chain link fence towered around the property. It was a _really high_ chain link fence, with barbed wire on the top. What a way to decorate a school. Looking around, he spotted an entrance nearly a quarter of the way around the perimeter. An entrance that was teeming with droids.

Probably not the best option.

It looked like there was an airfield in the other direction, so he ran for that instead.

The drone above him started making a beeping noise, and something _big_ flew over his head. It was a ship of some kind, and it landed off to the left.

“Halt, civilian.”

Three shots hit the dirt around his feet; a warning. Lance kept running.

“Halt, civilian.”

He tried giving them the ol’ duck-and-weave, but a shot connected with his leg and he went down hard, curling protectively around the tablet as he bit the dust. He cried out on impact, pain shooting up from his injured calf.

He glared back, and was surprised to see a large purple person walking towards him. 

“You didn’t tell me they were _aliens?!”_ Lance thought-yelled at Keith.

Keith gave him the mental equivalent of an exasperated shrug. Did it matter?

_Yes_ it mattered. Lance crawled away, fueled by adrenaline and years of SciFi action movie trauma. 

“Desist, or you will be terminated.”

Lance froze mid crawl. He turned slowly to face the alien, stealing an extra scoot backwards with the motion. The alien approached. He scooted again, in a final attempt to put some distance between them, and with that final scoot, several things happened at once. 

The world exploded with what sounded like every fire alarm, air raid siren, and hallway bell the school had to offer. 

The drone hovering above them sparked, wobbling in the air, and the three sentry androids accompanying the alien lowered their weapons with a mechanical whine.

And, much more quietly, the alien shot Lance in the chest, point blank.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Lance writhed on the ground. He couldn’t breathe. The thing had straight up shot him and he _could not breathe_ . He was dying. This is what dying felt like. Oooh man oh man this was not how things were supposed to go. There was something in the back of his head that felt like someone yelling. _Keith_ ? The feet in front of his face turned and walked away, but he barely registered anything beyond _need to breathe_.

And then, he breathed. It was weak stuttery gasp of a breath, but it was something. He tried to do it again, and this time it was easier. He rolled onto his side and curled into a ball as he coughed breath after glorious breath. The ship behind him pulled off of the ground and away. Good riddance. 

After he’d regained the ability to breathe calmly, Lance reached up and carefully fingered the burn hole in his apron. Beneath, he could feel the destroyed screen of Pidge’s tablet. The shot had knocked the air out of him, but he didn’t think he’d have much to show for it other than the burn hole. His calf throbbed angrily, so he just laid there in the dirt, breathing.

The yelling in the back of his brain had faded into a wild mix of worry and relief, and Lance smiled up at the sky.

“Aw, were you worried about me?”

Keith grumbled from across reality, and Lance let out a shaky sigh.

“Now we’re even for the time you cleaned my room.”

It was a deal.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeeeeah I don't know how to end stories, but Hunk totally made Keith fry chicken for him the whole time, and Keith accidentally stole an apron when he phased back into his own world to help resist the invasion. Pidge haxxored the aliens entire database with that virus, giving them time to retaliate. Yay.


End file.
